The Broken God by Gareth Hanrahan (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📕

him dearly.” Vorz’s fingers spider down Rasce’s bare forearm, linger a moment too long on Rasce’s knuckles. “But it is written: there are moments when the forces balance, and one man in the right place can change the world. Be brave, Rasce.”

“Thank you for your counsel,” says Rasce, scornfully. He has little time for Vorz’s mystic mummery.

“I have prepared the way for you. Speak to Vyr.”

Great-Uncle growls, eager to be off. Vorz climbs into the saddle on the dragon’s neck. Instead of the long rifle, the spear, the scale-brushes and hooks and other supplies that would normally be kept within easy reach, there are bags, chests of alchemical supplies, an ornamented metal case that Race doesn’t recognise.

“Be ready, Rasce,” says the dragon, “for my return.” The dragon spreads his wings, and steps forward over the edge of the sea wall. He catches the rising air and soars up, circling higher and higher over the New City.

Ascending, without looking back, into the heavens.

The city feels different in the absence of the dragon – fragile, weightless, like it’s made of spun sugar and the rain’s about to fall. Rasce tries to cling to his bravado, discovers he’s clutching his dragon-tooth dagger like a talisman. He shoves it back in his belt, takes a breath. By the grey god’s balls, he’s fought in the Godswar. He’s been a pirate, a soldier, a dragon-rider. He’s Chosen of the Dragon, and he’s never encountered a foe he couldn’t best. In all his life, he’s never lost. Convincing some withered old merchants to take the ash should be easy.

He beckons his cousin over.

“Vyr. I’ll need somewhere secure as a headquarters.”

To his credit, Vyr takes to his new role with great efficiency. Before the first day’s out, he’s found Rasce a large house on Lanthorn Street, on the lower north side of the New City, close to the edge of the district. It was occupied, but Vyr had the families squatting there moved up to the towers.

Like the rest of the New City, the house sprouted from the same miraculous stone. No one built it. Still, as Rasce wanders the freshly scrubbed rooms, stinking of some alchemical cleaning agent, the shape of the house is strangely familiar to him, like a childhood memory.

Vyr stations guards at the door. A sniper’s nest in the attic. Promises to hire a street sorcerer to draw spell-wards at the entrances. “And I’ve put poison down in the basement.” Vyr taps the floor of the cellar with the point of his sword, and there’s a faint echo. “The whole city is riddled with tunnels. The cursed ghouls aren’t supposed to cross into the LOZ, but they do anyway. They’re informants for the city watch so don’t say anything down there you don’t want repeated.”

The list of merchants. None are based here in the New City, but a few are close by, in the neutral zone along the docks. Others are on the far side of Guerdon, past the other occupation zones, in the region called Fog Yards. It’s almost funny. In the air, that distance from the New City to the Fog Yards is a heartbeat, a single sweep of Great-Uncle’s mighty wings. Here on the ground, it’s a considerable obstacle.

“Vyr, we shall need to hire some local ruffians. Blades, smugglers, footpads.” Rasce forces himself to smile at his sickly shadow. “I shall be boss, yes, and you shall be my counsellor.”

“As the Chosen commands.”

CHAPTER THREE

Something taps on the window.

Cari’s awake in an instant, blade in hand. Spar, show me, she thinks, before she remembers that she’s far, far away from the New City, far from her friend. She’s alone here, far from home, and there’s something at the window so get it together, Carillon.

Again, the tapping. Wet thumping, really, like someone’s slapping the outside of the building with a dead fish. The window’s shuttered; bluish light seeps through the slats.

Run, her instincts tell her. Running used to work for her.

Instead, she crosses the muddy floor of the abandoned room, stepping so softly she makes no sound. She readies her blade, positions herself to one side of the window, keeping the solid wall between her and – whatever’s out there. It’s big, she can tell that from the sound of its laboured breathing, from the weight of it as it thumps at the shutters. But probably not hostile – the shutter’s not that sturdy. If it wanted in, it could get in.

She peers through a slat and finds herself looking into a fish’s eye the size of a dinner plate. Unblinking, an awareness both terrified and placid, as if all it has ever known is suffering. The eye stares back at her without recognition, then the thing thumps on the shutter again, hard enough this time to pop the latch. The shutter bounces back, swinging open to give her a better look at the thing.

It’s either a huge fish that’s eaten the head of a drowned man, or a drowned man wearing a giant fish like a cloak or headdress, the two fused where the headless neck of the human portion meets the underbelly of the fish. She wonders if she’d see a face if the creature opened its mouth. The human body bends under the weight of the huge fish on its back, its knees and hands caked in mud. The body’s bloated, its flesh pockmarked with bites from smaller fish, water oozing from old wounds. Naked, but the fish have eaten away the genitals. The hands are caked with salt or something similar, little crystals clinging to the skin. More of the crystals smeared on the window.

The fish-part is still alive as far as she can tell, its brownish-green flanks beaded with moisture, gills pulsing in the pre-dawn air. The fins twitch, brushing against the window frame.

It stands there for a moment, then a ghastly sound bubbles from the drowned man, like he’s trying to talk even though his head’s got a fish clamped to it –